September 27, 2016

I don't know much about how the pollster organisation YouGov works but I always assumed they valued their reputation for producing meaningful polling data. In this instance I smelled a rat when the Zionist, Community Security Trust retweeted the following YouGov tweet:

Today's survey: do you believe that antisemitism is so deeply entrenched in our culture it is often ignored? https://t.co/LQX8ykFyXC

Now I shouldn't have voted because the question doesn't even make sense but having voted I couldn't access the survey via the twitter link. I had to use this one but here's a screen grab:

I don't know how people accessed the survey in the first place but it seems a lot of people will have come to it via a retweet, same as I did. Look at the question.

"Antisemitism is at the heart of racism". What does that mean? Surely anyone responding to the survey would have to say "Don't know" since that is the only honest answer you can give to a question that doesn't make sense.

"Yet, because it is so deeply entrenched in our thought and culture, it is often ignored and dismissed". There you go, that's the last bit of the statement. And that is a YouGov survey on antisemitism. So whose culture is "ours"? And what do they even mean by thought? The written up thoughts of public intellectuals? School work? Academic books and treatises? Or just the everyday thoughts of everyday people?

Now I know YouGov do fun surveys like asking people whether they agree or not with the statement, "Justin Bieber is wonderful" but clearly this survey isn't just for fun. It appears to be designed by an interested party, like maybe a player in the self-appointed anti-antisemitism industry but if that was the case surely an august institution like YouGov would offer a health warning, wouldn't they?

September 23, 2016

Sheesh, I thought this video was lost and gone forever. I first heard about it via this piece in Politics Home. Here look:

A controversial video criticised as a “slap in the face” by Jewish campaign group is still posted on Jeremy Corbyn’s official Facebook page, PoliticsHome can reveal.

The film, made by Mr Corbyn’s campaign team, features his supporters responding to a number of accusations often levelled at the Labour leader’s backers.

One of the questions is ‘Do you promote anti-Semitism?’ – in reference to a string of suspensions and expulsions over the last year.

One of the participants in the video throws away a piece of paper with the question written on it and says “so that’s gone as well”.

The Board of Deputies of British Jews spoke to veteran left-winger Jon Lansman, Mr Corbyn's campaign director, who apparently agreed to withdraw the video.

It has since been taken down from YouTube and the main page of Mr Corbyn’s Facebook account, but it is still available to view on the ‘videos’ section of his page.

“The dismissive video was a ‘slap in the face’ for the Jewish community,” said Board of Deputies chief executive Gillian Merron in a statement released last night.

“Having spoken directly to campaign director Jon Lansman, the Jeremy for Labour campaign now recognises the inappropriate message conveyed and has committed to remove the video and apologise. This is the right result.

Now, after a couple more paragraphs Politics Home hosted the video that the Board of Deputies had complained about and Jon Lansman had apologised for but now look:

I think we can guess that under the capitulationist advice of Jon Lansman, Jeremy Corbyn's Facebook probably zapped the video too. I asked one of the participants if they retained a copy but they hadn't. I was getting frantic. Even when Politics Home hosted the video it couldn't be downloaded. But when you see the video you will see that there was nothing in it to complain about or to apologise for which I am guessing is why Politics Home removed it. And now thanks to Jamie Stern-Weiner who found it on YouTube here it is:

So just like the whole of the antisemitism smear campaign against leftists and Palestine solidarity supporters this is yet another case of "nothing to see here", which in the case of Politics Home and probably Corbyn's Facebook page is now literally true.

PS: I've just seen that Harry's Place has missed the point of the removal of the video and hosted it on their racist site. It was actually HP's David Toube (he calls himself Habibi) who uploaded it to YouTube but rather smartly disabled the comments.

September 03, 2016

Your reader Deborah Maccoby (Letters, August 26) questions whether it occurred to Melanie Phillips that the tunnels Hamas builds are for self-defence in preparation for another "murderous onslaught by the IDF" (paraphrased). I can't answer for Melanie Phillips but that certainly didn't occur to me any more than it occurred to me that the thousands of rockets Hamas aimed at the civilian population of Israel, that precipitated the last conflict, were not in fact belligerent but instead were peace offerings.

Melvyn Lipitch

London SW3

Deborah Maccoby exhibits a level of ignorance beyond comprehension. Has she forgotten that Israel withdrew from Gaza 10 years ago? Every incursion into the strip by the IDF since that date has been in reaction to continued bombardment, which has become progressively more dangerous as Hamas has acquired more sophisticated weaponry.

Perhaps, with her undoubted experience of tunnelling, Ms Maccoby could advise the IDF how to discover and seal off tunnels where the exact routes and entry points were unknown to the Israeli authorities until the army entered the strip? Why should Israel leave the parts of the tunnels within Gaza undamaged thus allowing Hamas to remove the seals and rebuild?

Has Ms Maccoby written to the general press protesting at the deaths of thousands of Arab civilians brought about by the actions of Russia, the USA, UK and other European armies in the Middle East and the tribal slaughter throughout Africa, or is her ire directed solely towards Israel whose only desire is to live in peace with its neighbours?

Alan Miller

London N16

Maybe they don't know that Ariel Sharon himself referred to the "withdrawal" as disengagement rather than withdrawal or that he said that the disengagement was a "punishment and not a reward for the Palestinians". I expect the JC to grant the last word to Zionists but it might be worth trying to make honest people out of them.